Things I'm thinking about and learning while working with homeschoolers and writing Helping Homeschoolers in the Library for ALA Editions.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Homeschool Library Connection

HomeschoolLibraryConnection is a Yahoo Group that gives members suggestions of books they might want to consider asking their local libraries to purchase and also gives some excellent advice about how to best go about getting a library to actually purchase a book.

This is interesting on a number of levels. Reading the list of advice ("Don't give up if you feel that your suggestions are ignored.") reminds me of how important it is to make it easy for all of our patrons to suggest items that they think the library should purchase. I want everyone to feel comfortable making suggestions and like their voices are being heard -- even when I can't purchase whatever is being suggested. It also strikes me that librarians should be just as interested in this group as homeschoolers, perhaps even moreso, since it's a great way to learn about titles that might be of interest but are often not covered in standard review journals. The traffic isn't that heavy on the group (1-2 posts a month so far this year), so even the busiest librarians should be able to keep up....